Artaxerxes III of Persia led a successful campaign against Egypt and Nectanebo II fled to Ethiopia. Artaxerxes appointed Pherendares as satrap of Egypt and returned to Babylon laden with treasures.
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Alexander died In Persia at Babylon at the age of 32. His general, Ptolemy, took possession of Egypt. Apelles was a painter in Alexander's court. He had been commissioned by Alexander to paint a portrait of Campaspe, Alexander's concubine. Apelles fell in love with Campaspe and Alexander granted her to him in marriage. In 1984 Curtius Quintas Rufus authored "the History of Alexander." In 1991 Peter Green authored "Alexander of Macedon, A Historical Biography."

Ptolemy I Soter, son of Lagus and commander under Alexander, ruled Egypt as the first king of the Ptolemaic Dynasty. Under his rule the library of Alexandria was commissioned.
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323 BC30 BC

The Ptolemy and his descendants ruled over Egypt. This era came to be known as the Ptolemaic period. At the ancient library of Alexandria Callimachus of Cyrene was the first to catalog writings alphabetically.
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300 BC

In 2005 a well-preserved and colorful mummy from the 30th pharaonic dynasty was unveiled at Egypt’s Saqqara pyramid complex.
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300 BC200 BC

Scientists of the Univ. of Calif. Berkeley expedition of 1899 uncovered hundreds of crocodile mummies encased and stuffed with papyrus covered with writings from the ruins of the city of Tebtunis. The site dated from the 3rd century BCE when Ptolemy the Great ruled Egypt.
Links: Egypt, Reptile

290 BC

Ptolemy I of Egypt authorized the construction of the Pharos Lighthouse in Alexandria. It became one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
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Ptolemy II (b.c309BC, Philadelphus) of Macedonia served as the 2nd king of Egypt’s Ptolemaic Dynasty. During his reign (285-247) he founded the Cyprian port of Famagusta and built a canal to link the Nile to the gulf of Suez.
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281 BC

Arsinoe II, first daughter of Pharaoh Ptolemy I Soter, fled to Cassandreia (Macedonia) and married her paternal half-brother Ptolemy Keraunos, one of the sons of Ptolemy I from his previous wife, Eurydice of Egypt.
Links: Macedonia, Egypt, HistoryBC

279 BC

The Pharos at Alexandria was constructed. The lighthouse, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, was toppled by an earthquake in 1303CE. It was rediscovered by archeologists in the waters off Alexandria in 1996.
Links: Egypt

Ptolemy III Euergeter served as Egypt’s 3rd ruler of the Ptolemaic Dynasty. In 2010 archeologists discovered a temple, thought to belong to Queen Berenice, wife of King Ptolemy III who ruled Egypt in the 3rd century B.C. Archeologists believed that the temple might have been dedicated to the ancient cat-goddess Bastet.
Links: Egypt, Animal, HistoryBC, Archeology

Ptolemy V Epiphanes served as Egypt’s 5th ruler of the Ptolemaic Dynasty. He became ruler at age 5 following the death of his father. He married Cleopatra I and died at age 29 while putting down insurgents in the Delta. His wife became regent for their young son.
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200 BC

The Egyptian priest Hor cared for the ibis galleries. His writings explained that hundreds of people were involved in the animal mummification business at Saqqara.
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200 BC

About this time Eratosthenes (c276-c194), a Greek mathematician, ascribed the difference between the positions of the noon sun at Alexandria and at Styrene at the summer solstice as due to the curvature of the Earth. He thereby calculated the radius of the Earth to be about 4,000 miles. The modern value is 3963 miles.
Links: Egypt, Greece, Earth, Astronomy

Cleopatra (d.30BC), daughter of Ptolemy XII, was born. She was queen of Egypt from 51BC-49BC, 48BC-30BC. During her reign she declared earthworms to be sacred and her subjects were forbidden to kill them.
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51 BC49 BC

Cleopatra was queen of Egypt from 51BC-49BC and 48BC-30BC.
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50 BC Jun50 BC Aug

The "Zodiac of Dendera," a map of the stars of this period, was carved in stone. It is now in the French Louvre.
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48 BC Sep 28

On landing in Egypt, Pompey was murdered on the orders of King Ptolemy of Egypt.
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A Roman coin dating from this time bore the images of Cleopatra on one side and Marc Antony on the reverse. It represented one three hundredth of a Roman soldier's salary and was probably minted to pay the wages of those stationed in Egypt.
Links: Romans, Egypt, Money

31 BC Sep 2

The Naval Battle of Actium in the Ionian Sea, between Roman leader Octavian and the alliance of Roman Mark Antony and Cleopatra, queen of Egypt. Octavian soundly defeated Antony's fleet which was burned and 5000 of his men were killed. Cleopatra committed suicide. The rivals battled for control of the Roman Empire in the naval battle of Actium, where Cleopatra, seeing Antony's navy being outmaneuvered by Octavian's, ordered her 60 ships to turn about and flee to safety.
Links: Egypt, Suicide

30 BC Aug 30

Cleopatra, the 7th and most famous queen of ancient Egypt, committed suicide about this time.
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30 BC

Rome gained control over Egypt. The wheat fields of Egypt became one of Rome's main sources of food. Antony and Cleopatra committed suicide.
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27 BC

An earthquake hit Egypt and devastated the temple of Amenhotep III in Luxor, which dated to about 1389.
Links: Earthquake, Egypt, HistoryBC

TimelinesA text-based site.

25 BC

Strabo, a geographer and scholar from Alexandria, made the most comprehensive map of the known world.
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15 BC

Roman Emperor Augustus built the Temple of Dendur on the Nile for the goddess Isis of Philae. Its ruin later later made its way to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Links: Romans, Egypt, Museum

2324

Strabo (b.~63-64BC), Greek geographer and historian, died about this time. He had traveled to Egypt and Kush, met members of the Noba tribe, and decided to call their country Nubia. Strabo is mostly famous for his 17-volume work Geographica, which presented a descriptive history of people and places from different regions of the world known to his era.
Links: Egypt, Greece, Sudan

96 Jul 1

Vespasian, a Roman Army leader, was hailed as a Roman Emperor by the Egyptian legions.
Links: Romans, Egypt

130

Antinous, the Greek lover of Roman Emperor Hadrian, died in the Nile. Hadrian insisted that Antinous be given the status of a god.
Links: Romans, Egypt, Greece

Claudius Ptolemy, a Roman citizen of Egypt, authored his “Almagest” about this time. It was a mathematical and astronomical treatise, written in Greek, on the apparent motions of the stars and planetary paths. Ptolemy of Alexandria published his theory of epicycles, the idea that the moon, the sun and the planets moved in circles around the Earth.
Links: Egypt, Astronomy

168

Claudius Ptolemy (b.~90), a Roman citizen of Egypt, died about this time. As a geographer and mapmaker he collected information from travelers and constructed maps of the then known world. His maps were forgotten as the Roman Empire declined and were not rediscovered until the early 1400s. Robert Newton in his book "The Crime of Claudius Ptolemy" (1977), called him "the most successful fraud in the history of science."
Links: Romans, Egypt

249

Apollonia of Alexandria died. She was among group of virgin martyrs who suffered in Alexandria during a local uprising against the Christians prior to the persecution of Decius. According to legend her torture included having all of her teeth violently pulled out or shattered. She thus became popularly regarded as the patroness of dentistry.
Links: Egypt, Saint

The Codex Sinaiticus, a manuscript of the Christian Bible, was written in the middle of the fourth century and contains the earliest complete copy of the Christian New Testament. For most of its history it resided at St. Catherine’s Monastery built (527-565) on Egypt Mt. Sinai. It left the monastery in the 19th century for Russia, in circumstances that were later disputed.
Links: Egypt, Bible

An earthquake, whose epicenter was in Crete, leveled the Egyptian Port of Alexandria as well as the Roman outpost of Leptis Magna in Libya. Some 50,000 people died. The ancient Egyptian city, known as Leukaspis or Antiphrae, was hidden for centuries after it was nearly wiped out by the tsunami. When Chinese engineers began cutting into the sandy coast to build the roads for a new resort in 1986, they struck the ancient tombs and houses of the town founded in the second century B.C.
Links: Libya, Earthquake, Egypt, Crete, Disaster